Providence Profaned
by Vipaka
Summary: How could they have seen it all come to ruin? Was it overconfidence in their abilities, mistakes in their past, misplaced trust or just sheer dumb luck? This is the story of how the strongest magically-defended and technologically advanced era in the history of the universe was destroyed overnight. This is a chronicle of the Silver Millennium.
1. Chapter 1

A babies cries broke through the stillness in the air like the trumpeting before a siege. On a black marble slab, a hysterical mother clung to her child, as it wailed its distress. She wore only a peasant's rags, her baby swaddled in a scrap of cloth barely fit to be called a blanket. Heavy iron manacles bound her wrists and ankles to chains in the marble, anchoring her to her unforgiving stone, with only enough length that she could barely hold her child in her arms. "Please," she choked on her sobs, the words coming out thick and broken, "please don't kill my baby!" Tears continued to stain her dirtied cheeks, as she trembled with fright. The chains clinking, her quick breaths and the babies lost cries were all that disturbed the silence.

Queen Serenity stood beside the altar, her hair intricately woven into a crown of curls upon her head and her dress embroidered with pearls of the highest finery. The white of her hair and dress seemed almost to glow against the darkness of the room. She looked down at the pair, lips set in a thin line and eyes chilled to the sheen of a silver blade. She turned to look to her left, where a woman with a thick auburn braid wearing a soldier's uniform stood. "You are sure of the prophecy you have foreseen?"

The mother let out another desperate sob, clutching her babe closer.

The woman moved her right arm, which held a gilded mirror forward. Inside the mirror, cloudy reflections showed the image of the woman in front of them with her child, a young boy with black hair, and a shifting darkness. "The kingdom will fall to the same evil my sisters sealed so long ago, if these three images come to pass."

"Pluto," Queen Serenity called, not moving her gaze from the troubling image. Like a wraith, another woman stepped forward out of the shadows, her long onyx locks blowing in a nonexistent wind and a pulsating garnet-adorned staff in her hands. "Has the time gate conferred with what Neptune has foreseen?" A thin layer of fog seemed to arrive with the entrance of the new woman, dropping the already frigid temperature of the room by another ten degrees.

The baby was beginning to hyperventilate on its loud cries, gasping and hiccuping for air.

Sailor Pluto bent to one knee before her queen, lowering her head in a bow. Her expression was carved of the same marble as the slab, impossible to read, but the weight in her garnet eyes were far older than her youthful skin. "The Hundred Gate shows me nothing, majesty." She lowered her eyes to the ground. "I fear it is trying to protect me from the future to come."

Queen Serenity looked back at the mother and child, quiet in thought. "Has the gate sheltered you from great disaster before?"

"The future is nearly impossible to see, majesty, even for one of my lineage and training."

"The Celestial Mirror does not lie," Neptune said, brown eyes set in determination. "If this woman and her child live, along with the young prince from Earth, the Silver Millennium will fall."

Queen Serenity had not taken her eyes off the two sobbing people in front of her, but those eyes were devoid of mercy. "So be it. If their blood is the price of our prosperity, I condemn them to death." Neptune stepped forward as soon as the words were finished, her mirror raised in front of her and beginning to hum with gathering energy for a fatal blow.

"No." The queen placed a hand on Neptune's shoulder, stepping in front of the woman. "I have sworn to never take a life for the sake of my throne, and it is I who will break those vows. Do not dirty your hands with this distasteful task." The mother was still begging through her sobs that the child be spared. Moving towards the wall, Queen Serenity lifted a great scythe from its place on a weapon's rack.

"Do you know what this blade is," she said, moving back towards the now frantically struggling mother. "This is the Silence Glaive, wielded by the reaper of silence and death, Sailor Saturn." She admired the blade for a moment, watching it glint in the ominous low light. "It hasn't been used for over a five thousand years. It is only used when the soldier of destruction is reborn to herald the end of world." She closed her eyes, steeling herself for what she was about to do. "I am sorry, but I will not allow such a thing to happen to this world."

With precision, she pulled the scythe back over her head and brought it down with her full weight behind it onto the woman and her baby. Abruptly, the room filled with silence and the stench of raw meat and blood.

Wrenching the blade up again, the queen looked down at her blood-speckled gown. It would be ruined. When she looked up to see if the glaive would require cleaning, she saw the thick red was already sliding off its surface as if the holiness of the artifact repelled it.

Turning to her guardians, she squared her shoulders and spoke with an authoritative tone. "What you have seen today will be spoken to no one. While this sacrifice may ensure the continuing peace of our kingdom, they were Terran, and their death would create untrust between our worlds."

The two senshi nodded, deferring to their queen.

"I'll have to change before we go to greet our young Terran prince. Please dispose of this." she gave a sweeping gesture to the two still bodies on the altar before them. Moving back towards the wall, she set the now gleaming blade back into its display mount.

"The Terran prince," Neptune said, watching a glimpse of him play out across the surface of her mirror. "How do you plan to ensure our future? He is the sole heir to his kingdoms throne." Pluto had moved past both of them, and held her staff out to the corpses of the deceased. They were both encased in a dark red light before all traces of them disappeared, no blood left to mar the swirling patterns on the marble and the manacles hanging limply from the altar.

Queen Serenity shook her head, her long locks bouncing around the crown of hair piled atop her head. "We have already stolen him from under the noses of the ruling monarchy of the largest province of Earth. To kill him would certainly start open war between us, and only ensure the future we have seen does come to pass."

"Then what do you plan to do with him, my queen?"

"That is my concern. Fetch Sailor Mars and my daughter." She closed her eyes, wishing this reality away. When she heard the click of Neptune's heels fade down the hall, she spoke in a small voice.

"Did I do the right thing, Pluto?"

Pluto watched her queen, her expression stoic. "It is not for me to know, majesty."

They stood there waiting for Neptune's return, a sense of impending doom hanging over both of them. "It was right," the queen said after a few moments had passed, taking a deep breath. "It had to be done."

Sailor Pluto said nothing, because she did not know the right words to say.

Neptune returned a few minutes later with a young boy tied in rope and a dark bag over his head. Mars wasn't far behind, with a small bundle in her arms. This baby was cocooned in a thick wool blanket with elaborate embroidery, and was quiet except for soft breathing. When Sailor Mars looked up and saw the blood still spattered on the queen's gown her eyes widened but she kept her horror and surprise silent.

"Set them on the altar." When Neptune moved to herd the boy forward he took a blind swing to try and hit her, grunting around his gag. Capturing his arm, Neptune gave an amused smile.

"He is quite lively for his age. But listen boy, I know you can hear me. No harm will come to you tonight, but if you ever speak of what you hear tonight to anyone, I will renege on that offer of safety."

"Enough, tonight will be just a bad dream come morning," Queen Serenity said, gesturing to the slab where Sailor Mars had already rested the sleeping crown princess. Neptune pushed the kicking and punching boy forward until he was a few feet away and then lifted him up like a bag of potatoes and deposited him down on the marble with the baby. Sailor Pluto moved forward and restrained him with the manacles while he gargled to try and scream around the gag, and Mars made sure that the sleeping baby was out of the young boy's swinging reach.

The senshi stepped back away from the two children while the queen stepped forward.

Cupping her hands in front of her chest, she summoned the mythical stone of legends, the Silver Imperium Crystal. It shone like a captured star in the darkness of the room, rooted in the base of a small crescent wand she now held.

The queen lifted the wand above her head as she beseeched the crystal with her prayer, and everyone else in the room watched as its pure light spread forward to encase the two children. Like silver mist, it sank into their bodies, before a thin but real cord emerged, stretching between the two. It winked into dust before anyone could blink to be sure it was real, the light from the crystal disappearing as the queen sank to the floor. Sailor Neptune and Pluto rushed to her side, helping her to stand upright again. The young boy tipped sideways onto the marble, unconscious.

"I'm fine," she panted, despite leaning heavily on two women. "Its done, return him to bed before he is missed."

Sailor Mars had already moved to scoop up the princess in her arms, who had not stirred during the entire ceremony. As she left the room to return the baby to its crib, she gave the queen a glare over her shoulders. Queen Serenity had known her long enough to know that when they next spoke, she'd be expecting answers.

Letting go of the queen and bringing her staff to the floor with a loud thud, Pluto summoned a gate and carried the crown prince through it with her. When they had both vanished behind the fog of the fourth dimension, Neptune helped her queen to walk back to her rooms.

But Neptune couldn't keep her curiosity sated for long.

"What did you do to the boy, majesty? How can you be sure he won't become a threat to our kingdom?"

Queen Serenity gave a tired sigh. "His life is tied to my daughters. They are irrevocably bound, so that if one heart should stop, the other will cease as well."

Neptune tried to keep the shock from coloring her voice, "A soul bond? That is an extremely dangerous! What if he dies and it triggers the death of Princess Serenity? This prophecy may yet become self-fulfilling!"

The queen shook her head tiredly. "I can't foresee every future like Pluto, but I do know that if he tries to overthrow our kingdom, he would have to go through both the princess and myself. And now, should he follow that path, his kingdom will be as doomed as ours."

Neptune pursed her lips, trying to dampen the worry she felt. She knew that killing the boy would lead to war, but at the same time, this choice could have extreme repercussions that she doubted the queen could imagine. As someone with the gift of foresight, Neptune had some idea about the enormity of consequences these actions could have.

It could still lead their kingdoms to war.

But Queen Serenity was right. If the prophecy was true and the boy grew to be an instigating factor in the destruction of their world, he would be forced to deal with the princess at some stage of his conquest. And in doing so, he would unknowingly bring ruin to the both.

As she helped the queen into bed, she couldn't help the shiver that went down her spine at the thought.

Instead of securing the future of their one world, their queen could have just inadvertently damned two worlds.

-

Prince Endymion woke with a scream, thrashing in his blankets and sucking in uneven gulps of air. The light of a torch framed the doorway and a guard looked in on him while the boy climbed out of bed frantic.

"I must see Mama! NOW!" He rushed past the guard before he could react, stumbling into the hallway and running to his parent's bedchambers.

When he approached the two guards on either side of the door, he ignored them and began pounding on the wood frame of the door since he was still too small to read the handle. "Let me in let me in!" He screamed, the two guards exchanging amused glances.

It was not uncommon for the prince to have night terrors, and his parents had the unlucky kindness to entertain their son's fears even at ungodly hours of the morning without complaint. A few minutes later the door cracked open and a woman with long golden hair looked out and ushered her son inside. Her eyes were bleary with sleep as she hoisted him up onto the bed where his father slept with one eye cracked open.

"What is it now?" The king croaked, fading between the line that divided being awake or asleep.

"It wasn't a dream! I was kidnapped!" Endymion exclaimed, beating his tiny fists onto the pillows at the base of the bed.

The queen sank back down into the blankets, motioning her son to come lay with her. But Endymion would have none of it.

"I swear it was real! They took me and put a blindfold on me like hide and seek but it wasn't a game! It was cold and dark and there were two women and they said they wouldn't hurt me if I didn't tell anyone about it."

The queen gave a worried glance at her husband, who was beginning to snore again. The dream did sound a bit real, but Endymion had always been a very intelligent young boy. It wasn't implausible that he could have read a book that spurred this dream, or heard something that triggered it from one of the palace slaves.

Endymion was beginning to cry, still pounding on the pillows. "It was real! I was there and...and..." he couldn't get anymore words out between his tiny sobs.

"Oh come here," the queen leaned forward to scoop the young boy up into her arms, making small soothing noises and rocking him back and forth while he cried. The king gave a sharp snort as he woke himself up again, mumbling something and giving the boy a pat on the head before rolling over.

"It was just a bad dream," she said, running a hand through his soft hair as he continued to exhaust himself crying. "It may have felt real but it was just a dream...you're okay now."

Prince Endymion continued to cry, pounding his fist on the blankets as he tried to figure out how to convince his parents it had been real. "It was real, it was real..." he succumbed to another round of sobs.

Because if there was one thing he was sure of, it was that tonight had been no dream.

He'd been there on that cold hard floor, listened to those women talk and felt that strange warmth that had seeped into him like a smothering poison.

He had no proof though and his parents didn't believe him.

It was only after he had cried himself out and been returned to his rooms that he saw the fading imprint of redness around his wrists from the torchlight in the hall. Staring at them in the dark, he felt tears at the corners of his eyes, both from the frustration of being ignored when he was right and from the fear of what had been done to him.

He curled into a ball, pulling the blankets up to his chin and tried to forget.

AN: I'm entertaining notions about how the silver millennium could have possibly been caught by a surprise attack and fallen. A magically, technologically advanced, well defended capital of the galaxy, with soldiers who can see into the future and conjure forces of nature, falls to ruin in one night? No way. There's definitely more of a story to it than that, and I'm here to create it. Oh and Neptune's description wasn't a mistake. I'm going to be using predecessor senshi before the familiar ones we know for various reasons. But don't worry, you'll still see all those girls you know and love.


	2. Chapter 2

Sailor Mars was waiting for Queen Serenity the next day outside her bedchambers. Having prepared herself for this, the queen wasn't all too surprised to see her when she left at the very earliest hues of Earthlight.

"Now is when you tell me what the fuck you were doing last night," Mars said, arms crossed over her torso. She wore her honored uniform as all the senshi did, falling down her back in waves.

"Walk with me," the queen said, motioning Mars to follow her. The soldier did, falling in step beside her.

"Less chance too much will be overheard if we travel," Queen Serenity said as they headed towards the breakfast hall. "Have you been having any nightmare lately?"

Mars started at the accuracy of the question. "What has that got to do with anything? I have been having nightmares for months."

The queen stopped walking, looking at Mars in dawning horror. "Months? And you thought to tell no one?"

Mars gave a characteristic shrug, ever petulant. "Who cares, they're dreams."

The queen shook her head, blowing out a breath. "Those manifested into the power of Mars are known for their visions and prophecies through dreams. Tell me what you saw." She started walking again, but her slippers were making the same small clinks of the chains from the previous night, and it made her stomach turn. "Maybe I won't need breakfast today after all," she mumbled.

Mars scoffed. "I've never been anything special, we both know that. I was born a slave in the gutter of the worst of planets. You only took me in because I got the power of Mars. If not for that, I'd probably be dead in a hole somewhere right now, or selling my body for a strip of meat. I may have inherited the power of Mars but that doesn't mean I can just magically posses the power of sight. Reality doesn't work like that."

Queen Serenity fought not to strangle her guardian. Even after their many years together the girl was still as stubborn as a mule. "It means exactly that. To inherit the power of a senshi doesn't just mean you get to parade around the palace in a fancy fuku and light torches with your fingers." As they passed the entrance to the library she pointed to it. "You might want to spend some time in there. I fear you might be a bit undereducated."

Mars bit down her rising fury at the insult. Sure she was gutter trash who had never been tutored or raised with a silver spoon in her mouth, but she'd scraped by just fine. She didn't need to bury herself in a pile of books like Mercury to survive. But she'd known the queen long enough to know when she was trying to provoke her to distract her. "You're avoiding talking about last night, and I want answers." Mars stepped in front of the queen, blocking her path forward.

"You're right, I am," Queen Serenity admitted, slowing to a stop before she walked into her. "But your dreams are relevant and I do need to hear about them." When Mars didn't move she let out a sigh. She had a sinking dread in her stomach that she already knew what Mars' reaction would be to this. It was one of the many reasons she had not slept last night. Mars was an extremely devout planet, religious almost to a fault, and they held their convictions above everything. "Fine, I'll tell you everything but please," she glanced around the hall to make sure no one was listening. "We should keep walking."

Mars huffed and threw her hands up but stepped aside to let them continue their stroll. "Neptune had a prophecy of destruction," Queen Serenity said, keeping her voice hushed. "She foresaw the end of the silver millennium, and three milestones between our current time and that future."

"So now Neptune has the power of sight too, huh?" Mars rolled her eyes, disbelieving. The power of sight was extremely rare, so rare in fact that only a handful of individuals gained it during a generation. Of course, several dozen people always claimed to have the ability, but most were nothing by a sham.

The queen gave her a sidelong glance. "The outer and inner senshi are kept separated for many reasons, but one is so that the bearer of the great crystals can compare the prophecies of one side to the prophecies of the other without having to worry about them being influenced by one another. Prophecies are vague and if both the senshi of Mars and Neptune were to combine their focus it could distort the reality of the meaning, especially since the inner senshi are meant to protect this solar system from internal threats, and outer senshi that which comes from beyond it."

"You still haven't even told me what Y- I mean Neptune, prophesied."

The queen dropped her voice to a whisper, her eyes haunted. "Death. She saw darkness destroy this land, consuming all life with a hunger unlike any the universe has seen for over 5000 years. The palace in rubble, everyone you've ever known-dead." The queen shuddered. "It would be the Terrible War all over again."

"That I actually believe," Mars said, tapping her chin. "My dreams have also been of destruction and death. Always the same images, the prayer tower fractured in half, the palace a wasteland, Sailor Mercury's head..." she shook herself free of her thoughts, to afraid to speak of the darkness she'd also seen. "Still doesn't explain what you were doing last night."

Queen Serenity felt a few hundred years beyond her real age as she spoke. "I was killing a mother and her child, both singularly important to this prophecy. They were the first clear milestone, that if allowed to live would push us into that future. There was no choice but to eliminate them."

Mars stared at her aghast, "You killed a child?" She realized she had practically screamed the statement and dropped her voice even though her breathing was ragged. "You killed an innocent child?"

The queen wrapped her arms around herself, repeating the words from the previous night. "I did what I had to do to protect our future."

Mars made the symbol of the Martian deity over her face, glaring and spitting at the feet of the queen. "You have forsaken your vows. You are not fit to bear the title of queen."

Queen Serenity's temper flared, refusing to let her actions be questioned by someone who didn't even know the extent of her own abilities. "You dare question my station? YOU? Of all people? You are my sworn guardian and as such have no right to judge my actions, only to defend me and my throne."

"No," Mars said, stepping away from her. "No, I didn't swear to be your guardian. I swore to be the guardian of Mars. I swore to protect that which is sacred-the innocence of LIFE!" Her eyes were blazing with fury. "You have profaned and subverted the vows which you have taken to wear the crown for this system, and you will be burned for it!" She shook her head, angry tears in her eyes. "I believed in you!"

"What good are vows if your kingdom is gone and the Terrible War starts anew?" The queen could barely contain her rising emotions. "What lives will you save if all of you are defeated and dead? No, I will not stand here and be made the villain in this. To sacrifice two lives for the sake of millions is not wrong. It is what any soldier such as yourself is tasked with should the time arrive."

"You are a fool, Serenity. You murdered two innocent people for...for nothing but a prophecy! They are dead because of a blurry picture in a mirror! Those are not the actions of a soldier defending their kingdom, they are the actions of a power-mad coward! And that boy-the prince of Earth! You may not have killed him but I'm sure you did something equally hideous to him as well. I felt it, the spiritual change you forced upon him and your daughter. You changed the fates themselves for your own ambition. No, you are not justified in this, these are not the actions of someone who is of sound mind."

"You speak of treason for things you do not even understand," Queen Serenity hissed between her teeth.

"I speak of truth! And you are too far gone to even hear it!"

"Then take your lofty morals and begone. I banish you from my kingdom, you are no longer welcome here." The queen stood at her full height, still a full six inches shoulder than the soldier but every bit as imposing.

"That's the first smart thing you've done in a while," Sailor Mars spat, turning on her heel. She looked back before getting very far. "I curse you, and your precious kingdom. May you both be lost to the very darkness you think you've prevented."

An ominous pall fell over them both. Suddenly the air seemed twice as thin, the shadows doubling in length.

"You would lay a curse, a true curse on your home?" Queen Serenity closed her eyes, feeling the tension between them and the curse that had just been bestowed. "You cannot undo what you have just done, and if it comes to pass, it will be your hatred that has destroyed us, not my actions, a prophecy or a living darkness."

"You are more a fool than I if you think this place could ever be a home." Mars made a sweeping gesture to the cold marble pillars and sterile floors. "This place is already dying. Curse, prophecy or demon, whatever comes for it will be picking off the bones because a kingdom cannot stand if those who rule it are unjust. I have no family, no loved ones to lose if the silver millennium does fall." She stared with betrayal written across her face at her former friend, still fighting back tears. "You were my only friend and I don't even know you. Your kingdom will fall, Serenity, maybe through stagnation or maybe through rebellion from its people against you. But life will continue on outside the walls of your little castle. And this world will be a better place for it."

With that, she turned and left, leaving Queen Serenity standing alone in the empty hall.

-

Thousands of miles away, buried beneath rock and dirt a seal mark pulsed to life. Trapped inside it, for the first time in 5000 years, Metallia began to stir. Restless after so many years of confinement, she pushed against the boundaries that sealed her. But they were stronger than the limited strength she had recovered, and the blood of those who had died to seal her kept her contained. She almost had everything she needed for freedom now though, the blood of an innocent sacrificed for her sake, and a divine instrument's curse to unseal her. There was only one more trigger, and she could be free to devour this planet and all upon it whole.

And then, there would be time.

And there were always other planets.

-

Pluto made a rare appearance at the breakfast hall, sitting beside her queen as she refused to eat. All of the inner senshi but Mercury had yet to arrive, and Mercury sat the other end of the banquet table reading a book. She was all but was oblivious to the two who sat at the other end. The servants stood too far away to overhear any conversation from the table, and the open archways on either side of the hall prevented sound from carrying.

With Mars' curse still echoing in her ears, Queen Serenity was beginning to spiral down into guilt and regret and forget herself.

"These are dark days," Queen Serenity said, pushing her food around with her fork. "We may be immortal, but we are not invincible." She put down the fork, giving up on even the pretense of eating. The stifled cries of the baby had haunted her all night and now without any sleep the previous night she found she had no appetite. "It was almost the same age as my own child," she said, leaning back in her chair.

"I cannot clearly see the future," Sailor Pluto said, unbothered by the previous nights events. As guardian of the Hundred gate, she had seen far worse atrocities, and little phased her. She took a sip from her cup, her meal also untouched. "But I can clearly see the past. You are not the first to wear the crown who has taken measures to keep it."

"But killing a child...?" Queen Serenity closed her eyes, filled with remorse. "In the moment it seemed necessary. I keep telling myself it had to be done, but did it really?"

"I cannot say, majesty." Pluto let a moment of silence hang between them. "I can say that none in the past have ever had your benevolence, or ever ruled for as long as you have."

"Maybe its time I give up the throne," the queen looked down at her hands. "I have been queen for over two thousand years, and now that I have an heir..."

Pluto shook her head. "No. Your daughter is too young yet to rule, and it may take her many centuries before she has reached your level of aptitude with the silver crystal and is fit to wear the crown. You cannot abdicate without first passing on the great crystal, or we would all perish."

"Ah yes, mustn't forget the crystal that keeps us all alive and young." The queen sighed, the burden of bearing such a powerful crystal heavier than ever. "I fear that power has corrupted me," she said. "I've been queen for so long, and with so many planets under my rule...even the senshi have been reborn and pledged their allegiance to this system. I have more power now than I've ever had in all the years, and I fear that in my blindness I may have sought to hold onto it too tightly."

"Only a fraction of the senshi have been reborn, majesty. Without Jupiter, Earth, Uranus and Saturn, you could never become the tyrant you fear you are becoming. They would stop you. And I swore to you that I would never speak of what we saw." Pluto took a bite of fruit, swallowing it. She looked the queen straight on. "You are making that rather difficult." The queen gave her an apologetic smile. "I will say that had I been in your position, I do not know what I might have done."

"Sometimes I wish I had never become queen," she admitted. "The days when I was young are such a distant memory now, they slip like water through my fingers. But..." she gave a wistful smile. "I do remember what it felt like to be happy."

"Surely there is still much happiness around you. The princess, for one. She will bring light back into your life."

Queen Serenity smiled, placing her hand on Pluto's. "Your words are true. Thank you, friend. I will focus more of my energy into raising my beautiful girl, and less into preserving this kingdom. Who knows, maybe one day she will rule a greater kingdom than this."

In a rare moment of vision, Pluto saw a beautiful woman not unlike Queen Serenity, standing in front of a grand crystalline palace surrounded by a blue sky, great wings on her back. Beside her stood a man in formal attire, a sunset cape billowing behind him. It looked to her like an angel standing in front of heaven. She blinked and the vision was gone.

Pluto allowed herself a tiny smile, encouraged by what she had seen, even if it was only one of many possible futures. "I think she will become all that you could hope for, and more, my queen."

AN: Procrastination station is where I'm at.


	3. Chapter 3

A young girl squatted on the edge of an alley in the slums of the city, watching attentively as a merchant rolled his cart full of merchandise by her. Beneath the tarp he used to hide his cargo, she could smell the sweet fragrance of fruit. He was transporting food, and that's all that really mattered.

Waiting until it was only a few feet away from her hiding spot, she rolled a rock out in front of the wheel of the cart. It hit the rock and bounced, knocking a few pieces of fruit out of the back where they rolled out onto the ground. Without wasting a moment, she dashed out and gathered up the food, running as fast as she could in the opposite direction. The merchant was in front of the cart pulling it behind him, and it would take him a few seconds to set the cart down and come around to see if he'd lost anything. Ducking into another alley, she held her skirt out to see what she'd obtained.

Three bruised apples gleamed back at her, ripe and succulent. She hadn't eaten all day, and so it only took her a matter of seconds before she began devouring them.

Sliding down the grimey wall to sit in the muck, she ate in silence, wondering when her next meal might come.

She was still small, slight enough to go unnoticed when she stole, and quick enough to avoid capture when she was pursued, but it wouldn't last. She was eight years old now, and soon she'd be too large to escape detection. As a woman, she'd have other methods available to her though for securing her daily meals.

Swallowing the core and seeds, she looked at the stem of the fruit. Was it edible? It didn't particularly matter, she had another two apples still. She'd have to ration herself if she wanted them to last, this one apple would have to last the rest of the today.

Picking herself up, she slipped the apples under her chemise, shifting them a bit and pretending they were breasts. What would it be like to be a woman? Would she be beautiful like a lady or would she just look like the orphaned urchin she was, only with more wrinkles? She hoped she'd grow to be desirable, if she didn't she'd have a much harder time in life.

A glance at the sky confirmed that it was getting late and she would need to find somewhere to sleep for the night.

Taking the apples back out, she wrapped them up in the folds of her skirt, heading towards the cemetery where she always went at night. The ground was softer and warmer there, and she felt closer to her mother and sister which helped her sleep. The grounds keeper was an older man who was cruel when he caught her, but his poor vision made that infrequent. Sitting herself down beneath a monument, she looked out at the tombstone they had carved for her mother and baby sister.

She didn't know where they had gone, only that one day they had been there with her, and the next they hadn't. She was only two when they disappeared, and the memory was hazy. They had been poor, but they had also been happy. Now she was destitute and alone, and absolutely miserable. For a few years she'd tried to live at the shelter but the overwhelming loneliness she felt when surrounded by so many people who cared nothing for her was too much. The punishments from the den mother were also too much for her to endure. The other children had told her vicious things, like her mother had abandoned her because she was too much of a burden. Or that her mother had killed her sister and been hanged for it.

But she didn't believe any of them. She liked to think her mother had been kidnapped, and was still alive somewhere with her sister, thinking of her. One day her mother would come back and rescue her from this life, and take her and her sister somewhere they could live the happy lives they'd had before.

She put the stem of the apple she'd eaten at the foot of the grave, propping it up like a blade of grass. "I'm sorry I couldn't bring you flowers, mama." She balled up a small clump of clay and stuck it to the top of the stem. "Maybe this will grow into a great apple tree for you instead."

"What are you doing here again, Beryl!" She whirled to find the elderly grounds keeper behind her, brandishing a shovel. "I told you that you can't stay here!"

"I was just visiting mama," she whispered, making sure her stolen apples were well hidden. "I'll leave."

"Then scram!" He waved the shovel at her.

She didn't want to wait to see if he'd actually hit her with the tool, so she hurried away, careful to keep a grip on where the food was hidden in her skirt.

She'd had to find somewhere else to stay tonight.

-

Sailor Venus laid herself out on a bench in the palace gardens, her curly blonde locks fanning out around her. On her stomach, a toddler was busy braiding those locks into a beard.

"Minako," her mother groaned, glancing down when the toddler pulled on her hair.

"Sowwy mama," Minako giggled, finishing off the braid and examining her work. Her mama looked like a lovely golden dwarf.

"Am I a fine man now?" her mother reached up to pull a few of Minako's straight tufts of hair between her fingers. The girl was going to have hair just like her fathers when she grew up.

"King mama!" Minako pronounced, pulling up on a piece of hair so that it formed a mustache at the top of the braid. Plucking a few nearby flowers, she placed them in a crown at the top of her mother's head, tucking them into her senshi tiara.

"You know Minako, I think you're old enough now you should start learning some things besides how to play." Sitting up, Sailor Venus shifted her daughter to one knee. Minako whined when the movement undid her hard work, letting her mothers hair free from its beard. "One day you're going to grow up to be a beautiful woman, and that can have consequences." She stroked her daughter's hair, looking down into her cornflower eyes. "Do you want to play senshi?"

Minako's eyes lit up, she wanted nothing more than to grow up to be just like her mama. "Sensii! Sensii!" She clapped her hands together with excitement.

"Okay, but this time you'll have to try harder than last time." She gave her a mock-stern look.

Minako screwed up her face to try and look serious. Sailor Venus laughed, setting the girl on the ground. When Minako went to pick up a stick, her mother knocked it out of her hand.

Minako pouted, going to pick up the stick again. Her mother hit it away a second time. Minako frowned. "No sensii?"

"Lets try something else. You won't always have a weapon. Sometimes you'll have to become the weapon."

Minako was screwing her face up again in confusion, trying to understand.

"Show me a kick," Venus instructed. Minako threw out her leg from the knee, wobbling and falling over afterwards. "That was good! Lets see it again, but this time no falling." Minako eagerly climbed back to her feet, teetering dangerously as she shot her leg out again but managing to stay upright. "Okay now lets see if you can do a kick like this," Sailor Venus slowly brought her leg up into a high kick, her heel well above her waist line when fully extended. Minako tried to imitate it but fell onto her butt again. "That was great, but you fell over again. Falling over is the worst thing you can do in a battle, it gives your opponent the advantage." Minako was already back up trying to perform a high kick again, but her balance was simply not strong enough and she continued to push herself back into the ground.

"Venus!" a voice behind her distracted her from Minako and she turned to see that Sailor Mercury was standing under a nearby column, motioning her over.

Smiling Sailor Venus scooped her up and set her on her feet again. "Why don't you keep practicing and the next time we play senshi you can show me how good your kick is." Minako nodded eagerly, giving the kick another attempt. "You go play with the other girls now, mommy has business to take care of." Turning without waiting to see if Minako would comply, Venus headed towards Mercury.

Mercury was typing away on her handheld computer, but she paused when the blonde reached her, looking up from her work. "We've got trouble," she said, shifting her screen so Venus could see.

The image on the monitor showed a temperature reading on Mars, with a huge spike dipping down past the range of the graph. "Mars is always frozen though," Venus said, looking at Mercury. "Why is this different?"

"Look at the base of the spike. At those temperatures, the blood inside your body would freeze solid. There are going to be thousands of people caught in this storm, and if we don't act fast, they could all die." Mercury flipped her computer closed.

"Without Mars to help us, there isn't much we can do though, you can only cool things and I only have light at my disposal." Venus worried her lower lip, thinking of her missing comrade. It was no secret that Mars had left because of a fight with Queen Serenity, but what the topic of that argument had been, nobody had been daring enough to risk their own position at the palace to ask. It had been almost a year since her sister in arms had left, and the void couldn't really be filled with Nanako still possessing the power of Mars.

"We have to do something, even if its just to evacuate the civilians. This is the first storm of this magnitude in the history of Mars, more severe than anything we've ever seen. Light has some heat with it, and even if I can't warm anything I can at least provide some medical assistance."

Venus nodded, expression grim. This was a dangerous mission and without Mars they had little hope of saving even a small fraction of the population. "When do we leave?"

"Tonight. A shuttle will be ready for us at the transport bay."

AN: I have mixed feelings about this fic (especially that first chapter). I don't know if I really want to continue it, rewrite it or scrap it. I intended to make a transition from the older order of senshi to the new one over the course of several major events, but I really am not thrilled with the pacing, and some of these characters are reading a bit too cookie cutter from the known senshi personalities. I'll probably decide what I want to do about it soon though.


End file.
